The smoke clears but stays in a way. A quiet uneasiness settles over the land in its place.

It rolls up her throat even when Hazelle can't see or smell it, and constricts her chest. Sometimes it takes her breath away, and she focuses all her effort in taking it back. She always does, and then has to return to living under the invisible pall of it.

In some way or another, she's always lived under smoke. There's no muscle memory to it except the instinct of fear. For all the safety training that made up much of her education, it serves her little in the aftermath; it was never meant to.

Her children are no strangers to hard times, let alone bad news about other folks. Hazelle told them enough to make sense of their new company and the disruption to the Village, and they haven't really asked after much else. They share the birthday cake in painstakingly rationed slices that Hazelle turns down each time, and in days it's gone.

Whatever the total damage to the house, work is diverted from the site to patch it up. There's also been talk of forming an emergency response team. Hazelle doesn't know all the details. She might be needed for uniforms, and that's as far as she cares to know.

Until then, Hazelle stays at one end of the Village and keeps her house in order, what with three more people in it. If she thought it too big for herself and her children before, she thinks so again as she moves Rory and Vick into one room and Posy in with hers to free up bedrooms for Greasy Sae, Annalise, and Nadine.

She doesn't recall ever hearing about a Nadine Findley from school or a Findley family at all. So it's not surprising when Rory tells her Nadine was from the Community Home. In retrospect, the tells are all there: the short hair - about two year's length from being shaved for lice - the defensive hunch to her shoulders, the shifting gaze, the way she protects food as she eats. She's unaccompanied from Thirteen, which leaves Hazelle to wonder how she made it here on her own when orphans were assigned guardians. Nadine doesn't seem like she'd be forthcoming with that story, so Hazelle hasn't asked.

Instead, she tries to involve her in the commission, in case that's something of interest to her. Nadine seems more interested locking herself in Posy's bedroom. While Hazelle has never raised a teenage girl, this at least is familiar enough. So long as she eats and cleans up after herself, Hazelle lets her be.

However much she tries to do the same with Greasy Sae, it doesn't take long under the same roof for Sae to apologize for how she spoke about Gale again. At first, Hazelle finds it redundant. But this time, Sae also brings an explanation. At least, Hazelle assumes that's why she tells her how her son got himself hanged for plotting to blow up the Justice Building.

While Hazelle vaguely recalls this among the handful of executions during the strike, she never made the family connection. There were a lot of Crowleys back then in the same way there were Abernathys: plagued by broken homes and trouble, gone within a generation…

"I was so mad at him for years," Sae discloses over her hand spindle, as Hazelle sits across from her in the workroom, closing another pillow. There's an ember of old fury glowing behind her voice, her eyes. "Always knew there was a chance I'd bury him. But not like that."

Hazelle nods. Probably every mother knows this about her children: if not lost before their time to the Games, then it could be to the mines or disease. For Gale, there was always something else: to the law, to nature, to war. To himself, she adds inwardly, and pins the thought out of reach in her mind.

If this is meant to assuage her somehow, it doesn't. But she does understand a little more now, and she can see her own shame and grief reflected back at her from wizened gray eyes. I'll carry this pain forever, too, she realizes. While it's nothing Hazelle didn't assume already, it confirms that aching pain deep inside her is there to stay, forever tied to the end of the war - the end of other things as well.

She looks outside and sees Posy crouched by the garden with Annalise, tilted over the same thing - a bug, maybe. Her brow furrows a little in thought. "The strike… Annalise is only ten, right?"

"Not his. My youngest daughter, Gwin," replies Sae, old anger giving way to fresh sorrow. Her hands still. "We're all that's left of us, me and Anna."

"I'm sorry," sounds so hollow out loud, even though she means it. Nobody said it to each other after the bombing; it went without saying, and so little could be said then. Somehow it feels more appropriate now.

Sae raises her chin. "Not asking for that. I only mean, if I had another chance to get through to my Willer before the end, I'd have taken it in a heartbeat." She shakes her head, as if not understanding. "Why don't you go to him, Hazelle? He ain't a lost cause."

Something maternal rears inside her. "I know that." He might not, she admits to herself but that's not for Sae to know. "And I intend to. Just waiting for him on when," she adds, less certain.

Sae chuckles. "Oh, my dear. I know Gale. You might need to just go."

"He only said not now, not never. If you know Gale, then you know it won't do any good to barge in and take over. It'd only betray his trust." Her attention returns to things she can actually do something about, here and now. Her needle and thread don't ask this much of her. "I need that more than anything right now."

Hazelle knows a thing or two about the kind of mothering that drives children away. She labored with him for two days, and it felt like forever. It felt like no matter how much she worked, Gale wouldn't arrive unless it was on his terms. This is no different.

Sae sits back and takes up her spindle. The spinning wheel has been delayed, and the basket of wool at her knee looks like a pile of snow, a reminder of their deadline. "Best you can do, then, I suppose."

This, they can agree on.

That night, after dinner, the children want to catch fireflies. They even rope Nadine into this, and so Hazelle lets them out after only clearing the table. She stays behind to wash the dishes with Sae but then even she's sent out.

"Why don't you go on outside," Sae suggests as Hazelle passes her the last plate to dry. "I'll wipe everything down, then make some tea for bed and call Anna in."

"I appreciate it." Hazelle rinses off her hands and misses her old apron as she searches for another rag out in the open before patting them dry on her overall shorts.

"Room and board, right?" Sae winks but she does seem tired.

Hazelle finds Rory, Vick, and Nadine sitting in the grass. She lowers herself beside Rory, mindful of her knees. "Are you letting them come to you?"

"Trying to," answers Vick, who's knelt holding a flashlight angled away from them. He flickers it on and off.

"Don't waste the battery," she scolds.

His brows and shoulders scrunch together pleadingly. "Just until I catch one. Please?"

The reflexive no is on the tip of her tongue. Really, as happy as that Crazy Cat game made her children in the bunker, Hazelle thought it imprudent more than anything. They didn't know how long they'd be down there or how long the generator would last, and Hazelle would've rather been bored than stuck in the dark.

"A minute," she allows, because earlier this week she ran toward smoke while her children slept. Vick takes this as a challenge, lying prostrate in the grass on his elbows, gripping the flashlight with both hands. He mimics their signals. She doesn't really keep track of time but she does give him a nudge after one lands on the rim of the flashlight.

As they watch Posy and Annalise run amongst the fireflies, Nadine lies back in the grass, hands folded behind her head. Rory leans back on his hands to look up at the stars with her.

"Do you know any constellations?" he asks.

"No," she replies. He nods a bit and stays silent, likely expecting her to ask him in return. But Nadine doesn't say anything more, and neither does he.

Vick takes it upon himself to point out the dippers, the only ones he can readily spot.

Not one for star patterns, Hazelle looks out into the twilight, where the fireflies pulse like embers yet flit from her sight like stray sparks, and takes a deep breath. She'll never take fresh air for granted again.

In Thirteen, the air was sterile, filtered over and over. And she can recall the moist, earthen smell of the coalface as readily as the pressing weight of a headlamp. And then there were the times of thick, smoldering air: the riots, the mining accident, the firebombing, even the house fire…

But the air now is bloated with summer and filled with the din of insects still trying to mate, this far into August. When she breathes in through her nose, it's like drinking relief.

Thinking of her own answer, she asks, "Still glad to be back?"

"Very," says Nadine, emphatic.

"It's different than I thought it'd be," admits Vick, after some thought. "Still reminds me of how weird Thirteen was. I'm glad we didn't stay there."

"You were pretty set on leaving," Hazelle recalls.

Vick laughs to himself. "Mom, remember when I told you there were too many rules? And you looked at me like-" he raises his brow in surprise, "and I said, I'm good at following the rules, Mom. That doesn't mean I like them."

She snorts like she did then. "It was very insightful."

"Wasn't just me, either. Aiden used to complain that we couldn't have a full minute of fun without somebody jumping in to stop us. At one point, I remember thinking, Even the Peacekeepers let us run around! Except for that bad winter, when Gale got whipped and Posy got sick and there was a curfew right after school." He frowns at the memory, and Hazelle pulls him close by the shoulder.

"Hard to believe that wasn't last winter," she says, her chin bobbing against his head. "Time goes by quick."

"Not underground," mutters Rory, and Nadine laughs at this, a sharp bark that startles them. "What?"

Nadine shrugs into the grass. "Just funny, what you said."

"Oh." Rory relaxes somewhat. Hazelle resists giving him a look.

"Momma, look! Look!" Posy runs up to them with her hands cupped, a yolky yellow glowing between her fingers. She cradles her hands to her chest, conspiratorial. "Guess what I have."

"Well, I bet it's a-"

"It's a firefly!"

Hazelle beckons her closer. "Let me see." It is very much a firefly, and she reacts accordingly, drawing her hands to her cheeks. "Wow!"

"I know!" Posy squeals with restrained hopping. She turns around to set it free, all delicate, as if blowing a kiss off her palm. "She needs to go home to her family. She told me so. She has a brother who lives far away."

"Does she?"

"Yes," Posy replies solemnly.

They holler goodnight to Annalise when she's called in, and then Posy wraps an arm around Hazelle, batting her eyelashes. Where she's learned this, Hazelle can't say.

"Annalise has to go to bed. But I'm going to stay up with the fireflies. Right, Momma?"

"For a little while longer." Before her daughter can think to protest, Hazelle tickles her sides and prompts, "Go find us another!" which works like a charm.

Next to her, Vick fiddles with the flashlight. "I wouldn't want to live in a whole new district again."

"It's weird, meeting people who do," says Rory. "I can see why, but I don't know. I think you should go home after a war, not somewhere else."

"Maybe it's not home anymore for some folk," Nadine says too placidly for something so sad to Hazelle. "Or they're just following the money, like the guild people."

Hazelle raises her brow as Vick counters, "More than that. Think about it: they're finally allowed to travel the country without being on a Victory Tour. Not that I would leave," he adds hurriedly, looking at her, but she doesn't believe him.

The thought of her children living somewhere else, far away from her, is still very foreign to her. Hazelle cards a hand through his hair for a moment and resigns to worry about this later.

"We need haircuts," she observes aloud, and her sons groan.

Later, Hazelle breathes in the scent of Posy's washed hair that's dampening their shared pillow, and doesn't fall asleep. Every night has gone like this since the house fire. She must get winks of sleep without realizing because somehow she's still able to hold herself together. It doesn't take much, she's learned over the years, for better or worse. But that doesn't make it any less depleting.

No matter how Hazelle repositions herself or rolls in place, mindful of her sleeping daughter, fatigue sits heavy on her but does not weigh down her eyelids.

All the while she dreads the invisible smoke will come and grip her. She takes long, frustrated breaths in defense of this, and resolves to do so through the night.

She has half a mind to call Haymitch, if she knew he'd answer.

Of course, commiserating about their wrecked sleep schedules at odd hours of the night wouldn't help the issue. Neither of them would need to spell out what's keeping them up, though, and she imagines finding comfort in that.

Though Haymitch might sleep better than her now; she hasn't seen him since the night this insomnia spell began. She remembers calling and him not answering and everything that happened afterward.

She breathes moonlight and doesn't fall asleep.

While it's not quite as late for Gale, Hazelle will call him once her mind clears. It would only pain him now, and she's trying to let him sort out his own without shouldering hers like she knows he would.

This inevitably reminds her of Verbena, who she still hasn't called.

Hazelle hasn't known what to say to Verbena since her departure to the Capitol on the heels of wretched, wretched news. At the time, all Hazelle could do was rush to help her pack, her schedule be damned, and hug her tight, Verbena breaking in a run as soon as they parted. She'd wanted to go with her; Gale was injured, too, but Hazelle was no healer, no mother of the Mockingjay, with one less child in the world. Her eyes still sting with tears at the memory - but now there's so much more, compounding it all to pained, unwieldy silence.

Needless to say, she hasn't called the phone number Haymitch gave her. Anytime she's considered it, she remembers what he said about leaving people in the past. She figures Vebena's absence speaks to her stance on that; she's even left her own daughter behind with it.

There's more risk of inflicting hurt by Hazelle contacting her than letting Verbena decide for herself - not unlike Katniss. If they call each other, Verbena may know Hazelle returned to Twelve. She'd know how to reach her, then - she just hasn't.

Not that Hazelle would know what all she'd say, should Verbena call tomorrow. Mostly, she'd just want to hear from her. But then the conversation would turn, and Hazelle would struggle with what to say about herself and her family and their home that isn't a home to Verbena anymore.

She'd recount the clothing commission and the trade deals she has set up with neighbors. She'd tell her about her plans to garden more in the spring and what all she'll preserve come fall.

She wouldn't say a word about her children unless Verbena asked. Even then, Hazelle would only want to tell her that Posy tries to emulate, and Rory to impress, Katniss so badly; that Vick remembers everything Prim showed him of the woods, and has even told Hazelle that he knows Haymitch is good folk, just kind of grumpy, because Prim said so once and Prim was right about everything; that Gale asks about Katniss every call and keeps himself away for her sake. But Hazelle doesn't know if Verbena knows the things that she does. She's not sure what would be worse.

Posy shifts next to her, turning onto her belly, kicking the blanket down in the process. When she settles, her elbow pokes into Hazelle's ribcage. Hazelle turns onto her side, facing her. She can just make out her daughter's face in the dark, blissfully smushed against the mattress. She pulls the blanket over them again.

She wakes when Posy does, which feels like mere minutes later.

Wiping away coffee dregs and breakfast crumbs, Hazelle resolves to break the routine she's trapped herself into. She'll walk to that damn house and face it in daylight. She'll visit Katniss, Haymitch, whoever - and be a normal person again, instead of acting like one.

On her way, she comes across stray geese.

She recognizes them by name - Nisskat, Pumpernickel, Waddles, Beakley, Snowball, Elbee, Gimlet, and Gose - as well as the two people struggling to herd them up the road. Kennet, a former mine fitter in his twenties, she knows through his parents. The other is Selene, a woman with purple eyes, lank blonde hair, and no tongue.

As Hazelle starts to pick her way through the geese, Kennet calls over them, "Sorry, Missus. They must've got out overnight."

"You have it too good to run away," she chides down to them, her arms raised to her shoulders. "Water, shelter, and two meals a day, and he won't let anyone eat you."

"We actually get three," Kennet breaks in, and she snorts.

Elbee pumps its wings and stamps at Selene, who backs away but makes no move to fend it off. Hazelle gets between them with an aht! that probably does more than the smack on the beak.

"Definitely your mother's," she remarks under her breath, glancing at Nisskat for any retaliation.

Selene looks at her like she's insane. Frustrated, she mouths something to Kennet and waves over her shoulder.

"I know, but think of how far they might get before he comes back. It's only right," he replies. He turns back to Hazelle and takes in her confused look. "I can read lips pretty well. Had to on the job."

Hazelle shakes her head, brow furrowed. "No, that's not - Has Haymitch not been home?"

"Yeah, we think he's been at Katniss'. Peeta Mellark came and got him yesterday, and we haven't seen them since."

A chill runs through her before she fully understands what all this could mean. She looks past them to Katniss' house and swallows against the pulse in her throat.

"On my way there myself. I'll let him know," she says in haste, hurrying away.

She knocks on Katniss' front door but, after no response, tries the doorknob and finds it unlocked. The house is eerily quiet, save for a grandfather clock somewhere in the house and a voice in the study.

She finds Haymitch leant against the desk with his back to her and the phone to his ear.

"And that might be," he's saying, charitable, as she stops within the doorframe, "but what's more likely is he's a lazy hack." He tosses his head back. "Wendell, he can't even be bothered to talk to her for more than two minutes. Even you're better than that." He pauses a moment. "I know that, but-" He stops abruptly, probably interrupted, and turns enough that she sees him pinch the bridge of his nose. "I know."

There's a familiar note of distress in his voice that reminds Hazelle of how he was after the fox attack.

She takes a step back to leave, and the wooden floorboard under her creaks. Haymitch looks over his shoulder, sees her there. He tips his head in recognition before returning to the call.

"Well, thanks for nothing…" Hazelle hears as she turns away and heads for the living room, where she can wait without eavesdropping.

Nobody else seems to be on the first floor. There's no commotion upstairs. Nothing is broken or bloodied. The kitchen smells sweet with a small mountain of cheese pastries on the counter and dishes drying in a rack by the sink. In the living room, there's a sheet cast over the couch, rumpled where someone has slept, and a quilt slid halfway off it.

"Come to see the shitshow?" Haymitch asks from behind.

She turns around, finally able to ask, "Is she okay? What happened?"

"Oh, what was bound to happen eventually. We all have to take our turn or else it gets dicey, like you saw last time."

Hazelle has seen the surveillance footage from the Mockingjay Trial. She knows what a relapse looks like for Katniss, and her blood runs cold. "What can I do?"

"Not much, apparently. Got a second opinion and everything, as you heard."

"There has to be something," she insists, not caring she's once again out of her depth.

"Expert advice is to keep offering her food and water and making sure she's not too hot or too cold or too ready to off herself. Every now and then, tell her something sweet, like that we're here for her or whatever." Haymitch crosses his arms and either rolls his eyes or looks upward. "Peeta's with her, and he does all that anyway, but it's slow-going. No-going, to be exact."

She follows his eyes to the couch. "How long?"

With a slight wince, he admits, "We don't quite know. Neither of us had seen her since the night of the fire. The boy was checking here when he could. Finally found her in Prim's bed yesterday - twigs in her hair, dirt and scrapes all over. She let us clean her up a bit and tuck her into her own bed but ever since, we can't get a response from her. She just looks past us." He shakes his head with a frustrated sound. "Even an eye-roll from her would be a miracle at this point."

Hearing this, Hazelle blanches, covers her mouth. She can imagine what all the fire brought out of Katniss to paralyze her like this. She takes a breath, trying to think of an actual next step, but nothing comes to mind and she breathes out at a loss.

Haymitch sighs after her. "Yeah. Fire left some damage a sledgehammer can't fix." He looks her over. "But you know that. How - are you?" he asks, the question catching on his tongue like a boot on the threshold.

She blinks at him. Nobody's asked her that all week. And now that somebody has, she can only think of how she's at least up and walking.

"Better than I was." Her face warms. She still can't believe herself that night. Even worse: the absurd memory of him over her, his eyes bright and his breath on her face, which doesn't help matters.

Haymitch nods, looking down. "We're working on that never happening like that again, you know." She knew as much, that he's involved with the response team, though she doesn't let herself dwell on it.

He shakes his head once, as if to redirect himself. "Why are you here?"

"Oh, the geese - they got out," she tells him by way of answer. This time, she expects the look she's gotten for the second time today.

"While your concern for them is touching," he deadpans, "they're fine. Spoiled, and pouting about scrounging like wild animals again for a day, but fine."

Hazelle levels a look at him. "I wasn't concerned for them."

He doesn't have a comeback to this. Instead, he drops down onto the couch. "Well, not much else to do here but sit around and worry. Doubt the girl would want you to see her like this."

"Do you or Peeta need anything, then? I can stop by your houses, check on everybody."

"If it'd make you feel better." He shrugs a shoulder. "They should be fine. About as self-sufficient as the geese."

"I hear you toss food their way, too."

"And washrags, if the mood strikes," he confirms. "I'd rather be here anyway. They're not bad, it can just be… a lot."

While Hazelle has long grown used to a big family in a small space, she can't imagine how crowded it must feel for him to have a full house. "You know, Selene and Kennet are out there trying to wrangle them up."

He raises his brow. "Really? And they're letting them?"

"Sort of." She grimaces, remembering back. "Well… not really, no."

Haymitch chuckles but it's halfhearted and dwindles into the same drawn, resigned expression he's worn since she saw him on the phone.

Hazelle sits down beside him, sensing she shouldn't leave just yet. "I'm glad Katniss has you two. You all look after each other."

His mouth twists in doubt. "Something like that." A troubled look crosses his face. "At least she doesn't have fresh skin grafts this time."

Bile rises in her throat at the thought. But there's that tone again, that she doubts many have heard out of him. She reads it for what it is, and it warms her heart to hear him sound like a dad.

While Hazelle doesn't know much about this sort of thing as it concerns the Hunger Games, she does know how it is to be a parent who feels helpless against their child's suffering. She finds his hand, holds it between her own. "She's not alone. Neither are you. If you need more help, tell me."

He doesn't look at her or let go of her. "Wouldn't know the first thing to ask if I did. Last time she was like this, I left her. Only came back once it blew over. Even before that, when she was out of the burn unit and playing hide-and-seek every damn day, I was blacking out in the hopes of falling off a balcony." He doesn't really chuckle; his breath hitches.

This horrifies her in several ways. Inadvertently, she tightens her hold of him.

Haymitch shakes his head at himself. "I can't do right by them. All of this, it should've gone to someone else, someone who knows what they're doing. I only knew how to get them through the arena."

And the war, Hazelle almost adds but thinks the better of it. What she does tell him is, "And that's not nothing."

"Sure," he allows in that mock charitable way, his eyes on the cold hearth, "but it ain't enough. I hoped-" He stops himself, jaw clenched, and the clock keeps time as Hazelle waits. He lifts his hand a little, starting to bristle, and hers fall away into her lap.

"Figured I'd be better at this, if I was… better," he grits out. He looks at her then, shamefaced. "I don't have all the answers anymore. Not for this stuff."

"Sounds like the doctors don't, either. Not ones you wanted to hear," she corrects, because they may have been perfectly reasonable.

Haymitch rubs the nape of his neck. "Guess I wanted a quick fix. No surprise there, huh? I know better."

Hazelle shrugs. "You're worried about her. That makes any parent act a little crazy."

"I'm not her parent," he mutters. "Not even her legal guardian anymore, technically."

"Whatever you are, you're here with her."

He seems to consider this, albeit begrudgingly.

"And Katniss," Hazelle says after a moment, weighing her words, "she's like Bena."

Haymitch turns to her, face pulled into a question. Of course he wouldn't know, she realizes.

"Heard this is about how she was when Artie died," is all she can honestly say about it. "Katniss got them through it somehow, and you're working with more than she did, then."

As Haymitch mulls her words over, he presses his lips against something bitter in his mouth. "That explains some things. I can't believe she left her - in my care, no less. Even when she understood exactly what Kat-" He breaks off in a hum, drawing a fist against an unkind, incredulous smile.

Hazelle should defend Verbena, reminding him that some can't go home, not after a war. Even children understand this. Sometimes they have to leave. He's forgiven her for as much. And sometimes it's best to stay away.

But the words fall through her. It's hard to think of something fair to say when too much of her agrees with him; if Hazelle lost all but one of her children, she'd never leave their side. And yet, here she is across the country from the child that's suffering most. Perhaps that makes her a hypocrite - she's in good company if she is.

Haymitch breaks the silence. "Well, then. Not her problem anymore."

"Last time it was this bad," Hazelle asks bracingly, "how did Katniss come out of it?"

"She sang." He leans forward, rests his elbows on his thighs. "Which was used in the trial to make her look deranged. Plead her case, you know? But it was actually when she was waking up."

They hear stirring above them and what sounds like glass moving against hardwood.

Haymitch nods to it. "The boy's up there painting for her. He'd sleep in the doorway if I didn't make him switch. Probably due for a bathroom break."

"I'll leave you to it."

"No," he says slowly, as if distracted. "Stay here a minute in case he comes down. I'll be right back."

She thinks of the last time he said this and almost shivers.

He rises from the couch and leaves her with the grandfather clock. Through the window, she sees him stalk over to his house. He stops in the walkway, looking down the street, and draws a hand to his mouth. She thinks she can hear a whistle. Shortly after, the geese trot back into view, a visibly relieved Kennet and Selene in tow, before Haymitch disappears inside.

Peeta does come downstairs.

"Who was that?" he's saying as he walks into the living room with a jar full of dirty water and paintbrushes in hand. He stops short in mild surprise. "Hazelle. That was Haymitch who left, then?"

"He's coming back," she says, and she thinks he can see on her face that she doesn't have any other answers for him. "Do you need a bathroom break?"

Peeta raises a brow just as they hear a doorknob turn. They look down the hallway to see Haymitch shoulder the front door open and lug an old, leather case through it.

Haymitch meets their attention guardedly, shifting with the case. He tells Hazelle, "Consider this your invitation," and heads upstairs.

She looks at Peeta, who shrugs. "Looks like I don't get an invite." He walks off into the kitchen.

Hazelle goes to the staircase and sees Haymitch standing before a bedroom door that sits ajar. He hesitates at the doorknob, then settles on the top step, where he can still face the door. She remains where she is, too curious to leave yet too conscious to draw nearer. Somewhere there's a sink running but here it feels dead silent.

From out of the case Haymitch lifts the fiddle.

As he tucks it under his chin and lifts the bow, something orange slips through the door, pushing it open a little more. Light, from the bedroom windows within, lances across him. He glances up. From her angle, she can't see inside but from his, he surely can. For whatever he sees, he starts to play.

Alice called him not ugly once. In a similar vein, he plays not horribly. Hazelle can't remember him ever sounding better, though his family's knack for spinning lent better to stories.

It takes her a moment to place the song; what's supposed to be quick with a lilting cadence, Haymitch plays slower so as not to miss the notes. The key he chooses is melancholic, too, when it's not supposed to be; the lyrics are meant to convey that enough.

Hazelle has never been one to seek solace in music but she could hug the sound now if she could. The spirit of the unsung lyrics plays in her mind, and it's all she needs to hear.

It's not all she hears, though.

The faucet stops, and Peeta hurries to her side, bewildered.

From the bedroom door, they hear Katniss join him to sing, as if unable to let a mountain air go without words. She matches his tempo, his key.

Her groggy, cracking voice awakens into something lovely and uniquely Katniss:

.

Lost all my money but a two dollar bill

Two dollar bill, boys, two dollar bill

Lost all my money but a two dollar bill

I'm on my long journey home

.

Homesick and lonesome and I'm feeling kind of blue

Feeling kind of blue, boys, feeling kind of blue

Homesick and lonesome and I'm feeling kind of blue

I'm on my long journey home

.

Black smoke's rising and it surely is a train

Surely is a train, boys, surely is a train

Black smoke's rising and it surely is a train

I'm on my long journey home

.

Haymitch's eyes are upward, wary and wistful, as if there's a thunderhead through that door.

Hazelle watches him watch her.


AN: Lyrics from the song Long Journey Home, particularly the Kentucky Route Zero soundtrack rendition. 'Spinning' will be explained/demonstrated more later.

Hope you enjoyed! Pretty please leave a comment letting me know what you think :)